Thierry Henry uses former Barcelona teammate to issue Lamine Yamal warning | OneFootball

Lamine Yamal has been a sensation for Barcelona since breaking into the first team as a 15-year-old back in 2023. Since then, he has become world class, and many people involved in football has started to set lofty objectives for the winger, who has also regularly been compared to Lionel Messi, whom many consider to be the greatest footballer of all time.

This has led to Lamine Yamal managing a lot of pressure, which is far from ideal for a 17-year-old teenager. Former Barcelona player Thierry Henry, speaking after the Catalan side’s victory over Benfica on Wednesday, was issued a warning about the situation, and he used a previous La Masia breakout star as an example, as per CBS (via Sport)

“You can see what can happen to you when you’re young and you don’t know how to deal with everything. Everything is happening very quickly, and with Bojan, he got lost in terms of anxiety and not wanting to be seen too much.

Thierry Henry and Bojan Krkic as teammates at Barcelona (Photo by Paco Largo)

“That’s something that sometimes people don’t understand and don’t want to understand either. They see you there, you’re playing and they forget that he’s a child who went from not being known to everyone thinking he’s good. Which, by the way, is good.

“I have already experienced that before and, by the way, I want to congratulate Bojan for how he speaks in the documentary, especially because it was difficult to deal with all the external pressure.”

It is very easy to forgot just how early on Lamine Yamal, who is set to sign a new Barcelona contract, is in his footballing career, and because he is only 17 years of age, he has so much room to grow. Whilst this is a scary thought in regards to how good he can become, it also creates risks for him to burn out quicker – and as such, it is vitally important that he is kept away from all of the pressure that he could be exposed to.